Huawei‘s Mate 10/10 Pro launch revealed a lot of interesting things about the smartphone. The company’s big push into localised AI, for example, could be huge for the smartphone world as a whole. The other, perhaps equally interesting feature, is something called EasyProjector.
On the surface, it looks like a more elegant version of Samsung’s DeX Station.
For those who are unfamiliar, Samsung’s DeX Station is tiny dock that allows you to stick a phone, like the Samsung Galaxy S8+, into it and then have the device push a desktop Android experience to a monitor. The DeX Station has a bunch of ports (HDMI, USB and Ethernet) that you can hook up various peripherals to so you get the full desktop experience.
However, there are a bunch of limitations with this system. The first is that the phone is disabled in this mode so you can’t use the phone and the desktop experience simultaneously. Secondly, whatever notifications you get while the handset is plugged into the DeX Station will appear on your desktop — which isn’t ideal if you plan to use this at a business presentation and have notifications interrupt your presentation. What’s more, you need to purchase the Samsung DeX Station dock itself which costs a not insignificant RM459.
Huawei’s solution, however, seems a lot more elegant. Instead of needing to plug your phone into a fancy optional dock, all you need to run Huawei’s Easy Projection (that’s what they call it) experience is a single USB-C cable.
This means you get the option to go straight USB-C to HDMI into a monitor (won’t charge your phone), or you can go pure USB-C to a USB-C monitor (with power delivery, will charge your phone — think MacBook Pro), or you can even hook it up to a multi-port adapter so you can stick peripherals like a mouse and keyboard (you can also do that via Bluetooth) in while simultaneously charging the phone (if the adapter has power delivery).
When you hook the phone up to a monitor like this, you will get a notification on your smartphone. This notification will prompt you and ask if you’d like to project the contents of your phone onto the external display (mirror mode). Alternatively, you can also launch into a desktop Android experience which is pretty similar to Samsung’s DeX and something like Jide’s Remix OS, all while still being able to use the smartphone like normal.
Should you not have any peripherals handy, you can even use the Mate 10 as a touch pad and virtual keyboard.
Unlike Samsung’s DeX, your notifications are hidden from the desktop projection because they show up on your smartphone instead. Huawei also says that you can game with Easy Projection on the larger monitor, though, you can already do that with screen mirroring.
Safe to say, we’re pretty impressed. It pushes us towards a world where the only device you need is your smartphone and that’s an exciting future to look forward to. We’re pretty stoked to try this feature out.
What do you guys think of Easy Projection? Let me know in the comments below.
